Significance

by Jo Mazelis

  Scott laughed. He imagined a hidden camera somewhere. The whole thing must be a spoof for some hilarious French TV show.

  ‘You are allowed one telephone call only.’

  ‘You’re kidding me, yeah?’ he said in English.

  The beautiful young woman grew even more solemn, directing her stony gaze at him, then answered in almost perfect English. ‘No, there is no joke. Not for us, at least.’

  ‘I need to phone my wife,’ he said at last. ‘She…’

  He did not finish the sentence, a moment passed while the two detectives sat very still watching him, waiting for more words to spill from his open mouth.

  But nothing came. Scott closed his mouth and nodded slowly.

  ‘Now it begins,’ he thought.

  Second Thoughts

  Marilyn got the local phone directory from the cupboard in the narrow hallway and took it into the kitchen. Her open notebook and pen were placed near the chair she habitually chose at the table, but now she sat in Scott’s chair and opened the directory on the table in front of her. She already knew the three-digit number for calling the emergency services, but clearly that should not be used for this enquiry and while her French was okay she might struggle against an inexorable tide of questions which pertained to real emergencies; fires, crimes and accidents or sudden illness.

  So she began her search for the number of the local police station, but she did not understand how such things were listed. She turned the pages to and fro, the small type becoming at times a blur. Inwardly she cursed herself for her inadequacy at so simple a task, her complete lack of foresight – how could she have travelled here so guilelessly over and over again without a clear picture of how to deal with a circumstance such as this? Yes, they had been careful to arrange full travel and medical insurance, yes, they were equipped with maps and first-aid kits and sunscreen and after-sun lotion and insect-sting creams and brochures about places of interest they never got to see, but this – this simple piece of information? No, in that they had failed miserably.

  Well, perhaps Scott knew. Certainly his French was far better than hers as his father’s side of the family were Quebecois who had settled on the other bank of the Ottawa River.

  Usually self-reliant and capable, Marilyn was shocked to recognise how much she had relied upon Scott’s knowledge and contacts. It was quite natural of course, as the links with France were due to his family, the journey undertaken for his brother’s good – though really it was done to relieve their parents. Yet still Marilyn heaped scorn upon herself. She should have known. Especially after Aaron managed to slip from the house and find, of all things, a razor blade. That was the point when they should have discussed what action might be taken in an emergency or a problem with the law. Instead they had merely cleaned up Aaron’s wounds, sedated him, then – oh, it was unbelievable to think it really – they had made love.

  Marilyn closed the telephone directory and sat thinking.

  Perhaps the thing with the police had been cleared up hours ago. Perhaps Scott (and it wouldn’t be entirely out of character) had left the police station and on his way back to the house, had stopped for a nerve-calming drink somewhere. Or maybe he had bumped into some of the friends he had made over the years.

  Perhaps from his perspective it was nothing. Nothing at all and the journey of her imagination over these last few hours was only that – an entirely fictitious ramble through an increasingly alarming substratum of possibilities.

  Hyperbole. A family trait inherited from her mother. Take a small and actually innocuous incident (her toddler self falling into the pond) and remove her father’s nearness, his strong hand reaching in to the water and plucking her out the moment she had gone in, and let the child instead splash, and sink.

  It was the difference between what might have happened and the reality.

  A close shave. A narrow escape. These are perceptions of mortality glimpsed, but avoided.

  After the attack on the World Trade Centre Marilyn had been amazed by the number of her acquaintances who wanted to claim some sort of nearness to the event by saying things like, ‘We’d planned to go to New York that week but then my mother had a stroke so we changed our plans’, or ‘My God, we were on the observation platform at nine-thirty in the morning exactly a month before’, or ‘I was interviewed for an insurance company with offices in the South Tower – they didn’t give me the job and I was really knocked back, but I guess that was fate…’

  Hyperbole, all of it.

  Marilyn stood up, suddenly remembering something. The Clements! They had left their contact details in case of an emergency. It had been on a torn scrap of paper they’d stuck to the fridge door with one of those gimmicky gargoyle magnets. She remembered seeing it when they arrived. She turned her head sharply to look for it, but the refrigerator only showed its blank white face.

  She continued to stare at the spot where it had been, gradually letting her gaze circle outwards like a searchlight. Finally she saw it, a small buff-coloured object, lodged underneath the fridge. She dropped to her hands and knees and perceived a veined wing-like thing tilted on its side. She reached for it, but her fingers could not fit in the narrow space. She got a bread knife from the drawer and managed to scoop the object free, but as it emerged she saw that it was not whole; all that was left was the bat-like wing and one bony shoulder.

  Someone had shoved the thing under the fridge in an attempt to hide the fact they’d broken it. Or it might have been kicked under by mistake.

  Marilyn thought hard and found herself picturing Scott clearing up the kitchen. He tended to be brisk and businesslike when tidying and now she saw him bending over to snatch a scrap of paper off the floor, then him screwing it up and throwing it in the bin without looking at it.

  More dreams. More useless wild imaginings.

  Marilyn stood staring at the dun-coloured resin wing as it nestled in her palm. A gargoyle was meant to protect against evil, what happened if it got broken?

  And how many hours of our lives are fixed like this in uncertain and worried waiting? Tick tock tick. We should be better managers of our minds, Marilyn thought, then she placed her palm over her belly and felt almost palpably the hours and days of her child’s life stretching off into the future. It seemed to march off confidently along a straight road and she saw that no matter what, it would always be moving away from her. As was proper. Yet she nonetheless palpably felt the loss.

  She thought about her relationship with her mother again; her silliness, her clinginess, the fusses she made about Marilyn’s ordinary childhood illnesses, the controlling scrutiny of first Marilyn’s playmates, then her girlfriends and finally boys with their slipshod manners, their scruffy clothes, their pot smoking and guitars, their unkempt hair.

  And then the nagging of Marilyn herself, why did she wear those ugly dungarees, those long dresses, she had beautiful legs and she should show them off! And her hair, there was just too much of it, get it cut, get it styled. You’ll never meet Mr Right looking like that! And no bra? It’s indecent. Poetry? Very nice dear, but it’s only a hobby, unless you do greetings cards.

  From upstairs she heard a sound, the creak of a bed as someone got up or perhaps just the noise of someone tossing violently in their sleep. She tiptoed up the stairs, listening for other clues as to the cause of the noise. She hoped it was only Aaron turning over, that she would not find him on the landing wanting to use the toilet, or wanting anything really.

  The door to his room was closed, she listened for a moment, then as quietly as she could she turned the handle and peeped in. Somehow he had moved so that he lay diagonally across the bed, his arms outstretched on either side of him, one leg dangling off the mattress in mid air, but he was breathing peacefully; a slow almost silent inhalation then exhalation. She closed the door carefully, listened once more to be sure she hadn’t disturbed him, then tiptoed downstairs again.

  The sun was beginning to sink lower in the sky and the shadows were le
ngthening. Not much longer now and Scott would be back. She rallied with this thought. He would be back and hungry. She went to the kitchen and began with a sense of renewed purpose to assess what food was still there and what she could make for their supper. She put some Charlotte potatoes on to boil; with chives from the garden they’d make a decent salad.

  There was flour in the cupboard too. It wasn’t theirs, but the Clements wouldn’t mind. She’d make quiche or a tart of some sort. Tomatoes in the greenhouse. A salsa then?

  Marilyn threw herself into the work, caramelising onions and blanching spinach; the back door flung wide open as if she had at last taken possession of the house, as if she finally belonged.

  The Damage Done

  ‘Recognise this?’

  Detective Inspector Vivier held up a photograph of a white object. Florian glanced at it quickly then turned away and shook his head.

  ‘Look at it!’ he put the photograph on the table in front of Florian, who gave it the most cursory of glimpses.

  ‘You’re not paying much attention, are you? What’s the matter, don’t you like remembering?’

  Florian stared hard at the inspector’s face. He stared with hatred, absorbing the bleached pallor of the man’s skin, the fine beads of sweat on his upper lip, the grim eyebrows, the lank black hair, the grey shadow on his lower face. The man needed a shave.

  ‘Okay, you won’t look at that, how about this?’

  The detective pulled another glossy eight by ten from a folder and tossed it onto the table.

  ‘Or this?’ another picture was added. ‘Or maybe this?’

  Florian continued to watch the man’s face, yet he could not help but get an impression of the photographs as they moved rapidly from the detective’s hands to the table.

  The human eye and mind are designed to follow the movements around them; hunting prey, avoiding predators, surviving. Florian got an impression of crime scene photos; a wasteland of yellowing vegetation, concrete, and also a human form; a woman dressed in white, with platinum blonde hair and unnaturally white skin. He continued to focus his gaze on the other man’s face.

  Something inside Florian kept making him want to hit the detective, fight his way out of the room and out of the building. He knew it was hopeless, knew that while he was innocent of the crime they suspected him of, attacking the detective could send him away for a long time. Yet the impulse kept rippling through his body, flexing his muscles, sending out adrenaline, setting his heart racing.

  He felt like prey; like a cornered animal, a rat or wild dog. Only humans can create this strange situation of imprisonment and power, forcing him to submit and behave in a civilised manner no matter how much instinct drove him to react in the opposite way.

  ‘Look at them, man,’ the detective insisted, leaning closer so that Florian could smell a combination of coffee and peppermints on the man’s breath.

  Florian shook his head slowly, blinked and moved his gaze to a distant spot at the back of the room.

  ‘Alright, fine,’ the detective said and he switched off the microphone and violently pushed back his chair as he stood up. The woman assistant who had been sitting silently beside him also stood. Without another word they left the room and Florian was alone. Through a glass panel in the door Florian could see a younger policeman had been left on guard outside the room.

  Florian knew they had done this so he could look at the photos in private. But he didn’t want to look, he didn’t want to know anything about this crime.

  He turned his chair so that he was facing away from the table. He sat this way for perhaps five minutes. He sensed he was being watched. He knew they would leave him alone in this room for a long time and that he would eventually look at the pictures, and that therefore he may as well look at them sooner rather than later.

  He turned his chair around again and cast his eyes over the pictures. The photos showed a young woman lying near some waste ground. She seemed to be somehow suspended over a drainage ditch. She wore a white dress and her legs were slim and tanned. Her hair fell down concealing her face. The picture didn’t look real – the girl was too graceful, too clean. A policewoman in a wig had posed for these. All part of set up to trick him. But why?

  He closed his eyes. Covered his eyes with his hand. Suzette. That was why. She’d been a flic’s whore. His property. Marked as surely as if her face had been scored with a knife, her perfection overwritten with a jagged scar.

  He opened his eyes and this time his gaze lit upon a different sort of picture. This showed a white cardigan that had been arranged on a sheet of creased brown paper as if it were a present that had just been unwrapped. He picked up the glossy print and stared at it. There was something familiar about the cardigan, yet he couldn’t quite figure out what.

  Then he remembered. It was the cardigan he and Suzette had found the other night, the one they had replaced after they had a change of heart about keeping it.

  He remembered finding it discarded on the shrubs outside a café. Pictured himself kissing Suzette. He’d had a few drinks so much of what he remembered either had a dreamy, slow-motion quality or it existed only as a series of single images or memories of sensations or tastes. The events of the morning after had more clarity. They’d made love again, eaten and had coffee, then on leaving Suzette’s flat together they’d put the cardigan back where they’d found it. His memories were bathed in glory. Him and Suzette. Suzette and him, staring at one another. The gaze that passed between them steady and unblinking. Since that night he’d had that uncontainable, irrepressible feeling of boundless good fortune and luck.

  Florian did not remember anything illegal he had done. He had not for example left Suzette’s in the early hours as he might have done a few years ago to snoop around the rest of the building in search of something to steal. He’d had no drugs on him. There was nothing during that night and the morning that followed that was anything other than honest and legal, nothing which burdened him in the cold light of day with shame. Indeed the business of returning the lost garment had felt like a turning point, an act of shared goodness, a celebration of him and Suzette getting together.

  There was no one-way mirror in the interview room they’d put him in. He looked up to the corners of the ceiling where he was sure he’d find a security camera looking down on him. There it was in the right hand corner, the little wall mounted device, a boxy silver rectangle with a single black eye. He turned the photo of the cardigan around to show it to the camera and nodded his head slowly. The lens made a faint quick whirring sound as the focus was changed by an unseen operator.

  He gathered all the ugly pictures on the table into a single stack with the image of the cardigan on the top, then leaned back in his chair, folded his arms and waited for them to return.

  The Huntress

  Marilyn had prepared the food in a frenzy of displaced energy. She knew that this was what she was doing even as she fussed with the food and all the alien cooking utensils in this French kitchen.

  Aaron appeared without warning in the doorway. His face had the creased look of someone who has woken in the middle of the night and after a visit to the john will trudge back to bed, easily resuming sleep and perhaps even picking up the trail of interrupted dreams to continue on with the unravelling of their baffling mysteries.

  Did Aaron dream? And if he did, what did he dream about?

  Marilyn had covered the kitchen table with the food, bowls of salad covered with plastic wrap, the just-baked onion tart and a quiche with cheese and tomato and slivers of ham, an aubergine dip, basil and tomato salad, new potatoes that had been boiled with chopped mint leaves.

  Aaron saw the food and went automatically towards it as though hypnotised. He pulled out a chair, sat down and lifted up his fork.

  No words were said.

  Marilyn sliced a portion of the onion tart and put it on his plate; he broke off a piece with his fork and ate with the sort of bug-eyed chomping wordlessness of children at a birthday pa
rty. He did not fuss as he normally would, shaking his head, pushing the plate away or clamping his mouth tight.

  Marilyn continued to spoon more food on to his plate. She had a sense that he was not even aware of her, that for him the food was mysteriously delivered by unseen servants – as had been the case with Psyche when she dwelt in Cupid’s golden palace.

  He ate at a decelerating pace, until at last he put down his fork wearily and reached for the empty glass which she had set beside his plate.

  He would want chocolate milk and luckily there was still half a carton of it left. Marilyn took his empty glass and set it on the counter to fill it, then before giving it to Aaron she shook two sleeping pills on to her palm.

  He took the pills, throwing them expertly to the back of his throat, before taking the glass of milk from her. He drank noisily until it was all gone. He still had that slightly sleepy-eyed look about him as he pushed back his chair and began to trudge once more in the direction of the stairs.

  She followed him up and at the top said, ‘Go pee-pee now Aaron,’ even though he was already turning in the direction of the bathroom. He left the door open and did not lift the seat, but otherwise Marilyn was grateful that he was being calm and acquiescent.

  It was dark by the time Marilyn came downstairs again. She again lifted the phone to check it was working. She did not switch on the table lamp, but with the curtains open, there was enough light from the street for her to manoeuvre her way around the grey humped shapes of the furniture and over to the window.

  She gazed up the road in the direction of the town centre and willed the familiar form of Scott to materialise in the distance. He had a distinctive walk, Marilyn thought, he kept his shoulders squared and level, his back straight. His long legs moved in regular strides as his feet rolled easily over whatever surface was underfoot. He possessed a grace that defied his height. Other tall men she knew seemed to stoop or slouch or swagger. It was as if their centres of gravity eluded them; their limbs were as alien to them as they had been at sixteen or seventeen when they suddenly accelerated upwards with awkward, gangly legs and long puppy feet and wrists which shot out of their shirt cuffs, knobbly and naked.